Festival director Hilary Lawson said pushing unpopular views underground is “irresponsible and dangerous”. She said: “Choudary will take part in two debates. The first, When Women Rule The World, asks what would a world where women were dominant be like, and what will happen to masculinity in a modern, matriarchal society? Choudary will be up against Oxford evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar and feminist journalist Julie Bindel. In States Of Emergency, he will consider whether terror is a new tool of war with revolutionary philosopher Ted Honderich, Sunday Times columnist Minette Marrin and former Taleban prisoner and Express reporter, Yvonne Ridley.

If Lawson said that, he said a silly thing. It’s not dangerous and irresponsible not to give a platform to reactionary Islamists. It’s not safe and responsible to give a platform to everyone. Giving someone a platform is not the only alternative to driving that someone underground. It’s perfectly possible just to ignore that someone. You don’t have to invite everyone. Publishers don’t have to publish everyone; editors don’t have to commission everyone; and festivals don’t have to invite everyone. Choudary is not an obvious candidate for inviting – he’s not intelligent or learned or eloquent.

I was invited to talk at the festival too, funnily enough. I couldn’t go because I live far away and I’m too poor to pay for a plane ticket, but I was invited. With all due modesty, I think I’d have been more interesting than Choudary.

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13 Responses to “Aboveground”

Just look at Clown Shoes Choudary (his new official name) and his complaint over not being invited to speak after all: (paraphrase) “that’s cool if you want to change your mind, it just proves that we should have sharia law in Britain, because then there will be no changing of minds: you’ll think what we tell you to think!”

It’s a shame you could not go. You would, of course, have been more interesting that Choudary, but I would have liked to have got the chance to see you talk and possibly meet you. You are one of the Gnus, but with a different perspective, not so science-and-evolution focussed, and so would not be going over the same ground as others. If I got the chance to meet any of the Gnus, I would try and make it you or Grayling.

Sometimes when driving I find a Christian radio station and try to listen to it in a hipster ironic way, or a take-what-truth-from-it-I-can kind of way, thinking that it would be radically different enough from the way I typically think that something good can come from it.

But I just get bored. Part of it is because I think Christianity’s being literally false in important respects means introspection on its terms is going go nowhere because there is nowhere to go. The whole thing is dead and benign to human experience. Part of it is the way my boredom physically manifests itself- I am equally aware of the saliva in my mouth or a rock in my shoe as I am of the subject matter of the sermon.

I felt this boredom in church, too, as a teenager, only it was a more guilty boredom then, and I can’t imagine I was the only one. And I can’t imagine that preachers leading congregations can’t know it is in the air, or that they can’t know how some parishioners have surely internalized it as part of the normal religious experience. (I similarly feel a bit of my soul dying whenever I read how “only religion can explain X so concede to it that aspect of your own humanity,” or, to similar effect, Mooney’s articles where it feels like you are asked to concede the same in pursuit of “reconciliation.”)

But this on the other hand is easily the most interesting atheist blog out there, to me at least.

Oh of course. I must correct the last post. (#5) How the light gets in!

What little light does get in to the unfortunate and often reluctant individual inside, gets in through the small horizontal slit in the front of the bourker she is wearing. Spelt b-o-u-r-k-e-r in this more realistic way, because the thing for some reason is coloured black, and in summer in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi, etc, etc it must be as hot as bloody Bourke (ie the town in Western New South Wales) inside one.

Anyone reading this who plans on going to this orgy of illumination might care to point that out to the organisers.

Pity you couldn’t make it Ophelia, like Steve Zara I would love to hear you talk.

As for Mr Choudary, if it’s considered a good idea to invite controversial characters to give talks so that they don’t go “underground”, then I take it the organisers of this conference would be willing to invite peadophiles to give their point of view.

from Choudary’s website, moaning that Britain is clearly a dictatorship as someone has uninvited him from a festival : “It seems that freedom of expression, discussion and debate are all good sound bites but in reality the authorities and police can dictate which voices should be heard in today’s Britain”.

I love it. The complete failure to see the irony. This is a guy who turned up at the Jyllands-Posten protests calling for cartoonists to be executed. Now he’s moaning about his lack of free speech because he isn’t given a platform at a festival?

I love it. The complete failure to see the irony. This is a guy who turned up at the Jyllands-Posten protests calling for cartoonists to be executed. Now he’s moaning about his lack of free speech because he isn’t given a platform at a festival?

I’m not sure there is a complete failure to see the irony so much as there’s a built- in justification in Choudary’s beliefs that what he does is held to a different standard than others because, you know, he has truth and all. That’s pretty common in authoritarian people, as Choudary seems to be. In his mind he is a, if not the, legitimate authority so he can casually call for the execution of cartoonists that offend him but the government can only be legitimate if it has his blessings and approval. In this case it does not so, in his mind, they are infringing on his rights.

I’m not sure there is a complete failure to see the irony so much as there’s a built- in justification in Choudary’s beliefs that what he does is held to a different standard than others because, you know, he has truth and all.

Yes. The movement makes the man, who shapes up as a little Corporal Himmelstoss. Without Islam he would probably be truly nothing, and would have to get a life. Might be a bit of an ask in his case.

Minor detail point, Ophelia; Hilary Lawson is a man. I used to know him in the 80s, when he was an independent TV producer doing medical and science documentaries. He’s always been interested in controversy and dramatic material, which he always said was ‘good TV’.

Perhaps this website could set up a donation page, so some of us could ‘chip in’ and allow Ophelia to do some speaking events and other publicity stuff. I’m only a poor bohemians myself, but perhaps some rich philanthropist is out there, willing to help out.